Kono sex slave statement to be scrutinized

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Friday the Abe administration will launch a study team to re-examine the 1993 Kono statement.

The statement was the first official acknowledgment that the Imperial Japanese Army and government forced women to provide sex to troops in military brothels.

The statement, issued by then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono, was based on testimony by 16 South Korean former “comfort women” selected by Seoul who said they were forced into prostitution.

The validity of their testimony has never been scrutinized.

“We will re-examine it while maintaining the confidential nature of the testimony. Then the administration will consider how to handle this issue again,” Suga said during a session of the Lower House Budget Committee, adding that the administration will share the research results with the Diet.

No, please, looking for ways to make Japan look worse! Unless this is some unprecedented attempt to reiterate the statement and they’re planning some kind of renewed apology — which is both really doubtful and not a very good idea — this can’t possibly go well.

There’s no way Japan’s relationship with its neighbors will ever improve if its government keeps doing things that are very obviously going to further damage its international credibility. And the people who suffer will be normal Japanese who just want to live their lives without having to worry about which hornet’s nests Abe and his administration are swatting today.

Jud Mag

German kids visit Holocaust museums all over their country during schoolyears, it is part of the curriculum. Japanese kids are not even TOLD about the Nanking Massacre and the Comfort Women. Conclusions need to be drawn…

bridgebuilder78

Abe is brilliant! He’s taking advantage of the US ‘pivot to Asia’ as an opening to push his own agendas. The US is being played.